BEIRUT (AP) – An early morning Israeli airstrike killed three journalists as they slept at a guesthouse in southeast Lebanon on Friday, one of the deadliest attacks on the media since hostilities broke out across the border a year ago.
It was a rare airstrike on an area that has been used by the media as a base for covering the war.
The 3am airstrike turned the site – a series of chalets nestled among trees that had been rented by various media outlets covering the war – into rubble. Cars marked “PRESS” were overturned and covered in dust and debris, and at least one satellite dish for live broadcasting was totally destroyed.
The Israeli army did not issue a warning prior to the strike, which it said targeted Hezbollah militant infrastructure. The military later said the strike was being reviewed.
A reporter for Lebanon’s Al Jadeed TV in the south Mohammad Farhat said everyone rushed out in their sleeping clothes. “The first question we asked each other: ‘Are you alive?’” Those killed were camera operator Ghassan Najjar and broadcast technician Mohammed Rida of the Beirut-based pan-Arab Al-Mayadeen TV, and camera operator Wissam Qassim, who worked for Al-Manar TV of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group.
Earlier in the week, a strike hit an office belonging to Al-Mayadeen on the outskirts of Beirut’s southern suburbs. The airstrike early on Friday was the latest in a series of Israeli attacks against journalists covering the war in Gaza and Lebanon in the past year.
“Several hours after the strike, reports were received that journalists had been hit during the strike,” it said. Human rights groups say deliberately targeting journalists is a war crime.
“Journalists are civilians that are entitled to protection under international humanitarian law,” said Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa Aya Majzoub. “It has been especially disturbing to see Israel target civilian institutions just because of their affiliation to Hezbollah.”
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said it was appalled by the killing of the three journalists and called for an independent investigation.
“CPJ is deeply outraged by yet another deadly Israeli airstrike on journalists, this time hitting a compound hosting 18 members of the press in south Lebanon,” said the organisation’s programme director, Carlos Martinez de la Serna.
TV crews had arrived in Hasbaya, and deemed it safer, after Israel had ordered an evacuation order for a town further south from which they were reporting.
“That is why we consider it a direct targeting, aimed at getting the journalists out of the south,” said coordinator for the Alternative Press Syndicate in Lebanon Elsy Moufarrej. “They want to prevent the journalists from covering and having presence in the south of Lebanon.”
